NESTS Traitors On the Move
by VidGmr1996
Summary: Short story. Made sometime after I graduated from high school, so expect some of the writing quality to taste like backwash. Some of it. There's a hint of cola in there, don't worry. And yes, that's the best title I could give it.
1. Enter Traitors

A hologram projection shows breaking news. A man is in the middle of his news report, with a slideshow of images to his left, showing pictures of UFO sightings across several areas.

"...these images have been leaked all around the world. Many speculate they're either photo-shopped images or truly real, existing extra-terrestrial creatures lurking about in the skies. In other news, another instance of strange occurrences has been talked about."

The news cuts to footage of the authorities picking up frosted carcasses, placing them into body-bags.

"Victims in multiple countries have the unfortunate and unusual fate of being frozen to death. Some of the bodies' remains have been seen to be in hundreds of fragments, others horribly sliced up. What caused this? Has a new terrorist group went on a rampage with a new type of warfare weaponry? And could this be linked to the alien sightings?"

A man with grizzly sideburns continues to watch the news through the hologram a little further, doing so by having two fingers against his temple. He stops his imaging module and crosses his arms, sighing.

Beside him is a teenager with bleach-white hair, who plainly stares at a bunch of cards scattered over a table from their game last night. Although he may not look like it, he heard everything on the news.

"Hey partner," says the grizzly-faced man. "We gotta do something other than running around and hiding."

"Like what, destroy the cartel's bases?" the teenager replies.

"Exactly. We just need a team-"

"Ugh...Maxima, really? You almost bit the dust with those mercenaries."

"Yeah, but we held them off pretty well. We were able to get some of our buddies outta there...with unfortunate case of us splitting up in the middle of it all."

Maxima's talk of this topic brings his mind to focus on his right hand. It's encased in a special glove of dark crimson red and black.

"Hmph," the bleach hair says as reaches over to get some beef jerky from the table. Maxima was going to comment on that he did get some food appropriate for the morning, but knowing K', he decides to continue his discussion of the cartel. K' chows it down as Maxima continues.

"I've been improving my cracking skills lately. Maybe I can pinpoint one of N.E.S.T.S.' locations."

"'Aight," his buddy says as continues to wolf down his breakfast meal.

"C'mon K', not in my face," Maxima grimaces as he brushes off some beef jerky spat on his face. K' gets up off the couch just as Maxima places his fingers onto his temple.

He creates a holographic image showing the tunnels of cyberspace. K' was going to walk off to somewhere else, but just stands as he looks at the image. A small beat passes, and Maxima finds the location of a base.

"Alright!" Maxima says with quite the enthusiasm. The shape of South Korea flashes as his scanners found suspicious activity in the country.

"Hey, is that where I think it is?" K' asks. "I mean, I heard the others saying that the base over there is a bitch to infiltrate. One guy did make it through. 'Heard he didn't come back out."

"Mm-hmm," an occupied Maxima replies as looks through the clusters of locations.

"Darn, N.E.S.T.S. has put a defensive system that prevented me from looking in their whereabouts further. They gave me a chunk of scrambled coding. I need to decrypt it first, and it looks like it's pretty long. My decrypter isn't the best nor the fastest in the world, so it'll take ages if I do it. But we don't we have time." Maxima turns off the hologram again.

Suddenly, the cyborg stop in place as he hears something outside. By second nature, K' raises up the blinds slightly with a pair of stolen binoculars.

"See anything?"

"The mercs!" K' turns around and snatches up his black leather jacket.

"'You sure?"

"Of course. I remember that dude with the red scarf. He always looks mad as hell."

* * *

 _ **End of Chapter 1. The first paragraph had originally described what the news reporter was saying, making it a bit monotonous to read. Also took out a bit of hackneyed dialogue between K' and Maxima. Even then, I'm not satisfied with how I wrote Maxima trying to track down the bases, but then again, this was a couple months after I made that Metal Slug story back in 2014.**_


	2. Morning Chase Routine

The wall right next to the front door is smashed into pieces. Outstretched and caked in dust is the fist of loudmouthed, red-scarfed Ikari mercenary. Beside him are a few of his partners.

"We could've just kicked down the door, sir," Clark tells him as he adjusts his sunglasses. He shakes his head in embarrassment as a bystander looked at them across the hallway.

"Yeah, but maybe they could've been standing right here like idiots. We don't know if they were able to sneak under our radar."

"But hey, don't worry, Ralf. Leona'll get 'em."

After spitting out a bit of dust, Ralf smirks.

"'Ya better be right."

Pigeons fly in unison as K' and Maxima run across a rooftop. Bullets fly past their heads as they hop off onto another rooftop.

"I think they're trying to scare us!" Maxima yells over the sporadic instances of gunfire.

"Who knows, just gotta get the hell away from them!"

Some distance away from the two are a pair of dangerous women in matching military uniforms. The blue-haired individual is Leona, and the brunette is known as Whip. These two are some of the Ikari Warriors' finest.

Leona commands Whip as she puts her gun back in the holster.

"I'll take on the cyborg, while you handle the adolescent."

"Understood." Whip puts her gun back in the holster as she does as she is told. The two are in pursuit with the fugitives. In contrast to Whip's, Leona's swift running almost makes her look like a tiger chasing its prey.

The two fugitives slide down a slanted roof and land on their feet as they continue their running. The women follow suite.

In a quick motion, K' snatches a person's cellular phone and flicks it right back at Leona, and flawlessly goes back into running alongside the cyborg.

"No!" Yells the phone's owner as he digs his hands into his hair.

Leona is unfazed as she catches it and throws it back the person. The man fumbles with the phone before catching it. Awkwardly, he salutes to her as she runs past him.

"T-thank you, ma'am!"

Whip smiles, knowing that Leona isn't as heartless as she once was.

"Let's split!" K' tells Maxima.

"I don't know about this, partner."

"Well I do!"

K' parts ways with him as he hops onto a fire escape, climbing as fast as he can on it.

Maxima finds a mother and a child approaching their vehicle.

"Excuse me, miss!"

Maxima hops onto the trunk before hopping off toward the back of a truck. The big guy grabs onto the edge of the moving vehicle. Unfortunately for her, the mother finds a large dent shaped like Maxima's boot.

On the rooftops, K' flicks out a wick of flame from his power glove and immediately spin kicks it directly toward Whip, who uses her namesake weapon to extinguish it.

Clark is behind an air vent that's in K' and Whip's path. As the leather-wearer comes closer, Clark activates a weapon and aims it right at him.

K' hops backwards as the whip cracks the roof. He turns around to see an airborne net approaching him. K' slides right through the net in a shadowy haze. The net latches itself on the ground, only capturing a dropped bag of beef jerky.

"Dammit," Clark murmurs.

K' heads toward the edge of the building and quickly scans the area. He hears a slicing noise in the distance and lets his eyes follow where his ears heard it, and spots Maxima dealing with Leona. He's too far for K' jump to.

Back on the streets, Ralf commands a few agents who are sitting on their motorcycles.

"...and you head to New Godokin Street, alright?" A man nods to him in response.

"Right." Ralf puts on his helmet and revs up his vehicle.

"Let's go!" They all head in separate directions as their motorcycles' engines silently hum through the loud urban streets.

Agile legs knock Maxima off balance, causing him to wobble near the edge of the truck. Leona pulls off an earring and throws it at him. Knowing how those things work, Maxima quickly hops backwards, right off the truck. The ground cracks as Maxima rolls backwards, onto the sidewalk. Shocked bystanders look at the brute as he shrugs off the stunt. Looking to his left, he sees the ring, which had a hidden electric needle that had went deep into a brick wall. He smirks, thinking it was the combustible type.

Around the corner, Maxima hears the familiar yells of his buddy. Above, K' elbows Clark into his stomach and performs a spinning kick at Whip, who ducks underneath as the leg slices through the air. Clark goes for his legs and K' falls right onto the grated metal of a fire escape. The bleached-hair teen raises a hand to do a fire attack, but the female mercenary grabs his hand with her whip.

With immense strength he yanks it and Whip tumbles forward, only to get a palm strike into her chest.

"Urhf!" she grunts as she tumbles backwards into a ladder.

K' tries to kick Clark who grabs out a taser. A loud metal clang echoes as the fire escape rumbles, to the three's surprise. K' enacts quickly, backhanding Clark in the face as the metal platform is giving in, becoming loose as all of them become off-balance. K' hops off of the foundation and lands on his feet. Maxima shakes his head.

"Damn..." K' says before running. Maxima follows.

"That's all you're gonna say after I saved you?" The two run past a group of people crossing the street much to the citizens' dismay. Maxima apologizes along the way, but K' doesn't.

The teenager comes across some bikers, pointing at them.

"There's our rides."

"Sorry."

Maxima tosses the two into the air as they land on a pile of trash bags that sat against the wall of a building. Engines rev down the city streets as the two try to make their way out of the city and out of sight.

One of the agents hear cars honking and sees two bikes trailblazing.

"I found them, they're in the 7th Avenue." He heads toward the street, with a fellow agent crossing paths with him.

With breakneck speed and superb accuracy, the two partners-in-crime dash past red lights and weave through traffic.

Nearing the edge of the city, K' drives up close to Maxima.

"Maxima, got a distraction?"

"Not any at the moment." K' holds a pill-shaped object.

"Got one right here."

The agents manage to find them and start gaining even more speed. In front of them, a truck is parked next to the car.

K' flicks out a spark of flame onto the stream of glimmering gasoline. It lights up as it trails toward the truck.  
People start screaming as they head the opposite direction, away from the vehicle. Reacting to this, the agents all begin slowing down, steadily letting go of the gas. Underneath the visor is Vanessa's widened eyes as the fire trail approaches the truck.

Then, the truck appears to be flickering, much like a hologram. Turns out that it was just all a trick. The gas stream stops in a manhole. The innocent bystanders stop to see such a deadly joke. One of them runs over to where the fake truck was, in which a pill now takes its place. He picks up, noticing that it was prototype technology.

"They were able to nab one of the Foundation's hologram cells." The man climbs back onto his motorcycle and continues the chase.

"You are one sick little man," Maxima tells K'.

"I know that slowed down those guys, though." A pile of flaming wooden poles sits on the fork opposite to the ones K' and Maxima are on.

Later on, Leona and the others find the huge wreckage. She raises her arm and hears a beeping sound. A small, scattered crowd surrounds the site, either just looking at it or getting footage of it with their phones.

"Commander, we failed the mission. Suspects have eluded the area," the woman says with a bit of disappointment. Ralf pats her shoulder.

"It's okay. Return to base, everyone."

"Yo, is something wrong?" Clark asks Whip, who seems to be in a trance. She shakes her head a bit, coming back into reality as she looks at Clark for a second.

"Nope."

* * *

 _ **My favorite chapter out of this previously-unfinished story. You know, because of the action and the bits of humor that even surprised me when I read it. Although, I do take note that it does feel a bit bare at times. Although I agree, the hologram thing is a bit much, but I kept it in. It was named as Ikari technology at first, but I thought that was kinda of ridiculous. So, when I was reading through the chapter, I decided to make it ambiguous and altered it so that the 'Foundation' made it. Who's the Foundation? Who knows... But yeah, it's been so long since I've last worked on it that I decided to make it a short story instead. Likewise with the Metal Slug Disjointed Narrative story, this was a stepping stone for a NESTS anthology. But then I wanted to make my own adaption of the events of KoF '99, and I assumed I scrapped this version because of that and other reasons.**_


	3. Making a Decision

The duo's bikes sat idle nearby a wooden pole, while Maxima and K' stare out at the blue sky. Winds pick up as a transparent sheet of sand surrounds the area. K' checks his pocket on his jacket, fumbling around for a bit until he realizes that his snack is gone. Maxima chuckles at this.

K' gives him a look.

"'You really think I eat those things? I have a bit of a dry mouth issue, why chalk it up even more?"

"I don't know," K' sighs, walking towards the wooden pole, leaning against it as he tucks his hands into his pockets. His partner continues to stare afar as K' looks at the ground with his sunglasses, obscured eyes half-opened.

"I'm about to go to sleep."

"Heh, you reminded me of a friend that always said that, K'."

"Right," he slowly nods.

The cyborg starts to worry about what happened back there.

"I'm wondering if N.E.S.T.S. had been on the sidelines, checking our every move when the mercenaries were onto us."

"Maybe. Why don't we find someplace to hide."

Maxima looks at the teen in slight irritation.

"K', we can't always hide from them, we got to do something. I mean-"

"Max, not even my strength can hold a candle to the cartel's men. 'Bet you were gonna say the opposite, weren't you?"

Apparently so as Maxima sighs. After a silent moment, he takes the initiative.

"I'm attempting to contact Harry Ness. It's your choice, 'Dash..."

No words come from the bleached-haired teen. Now Maxima is hesitant. The two have been with each other for awhile, almost like an oddball father-to-son, brother-to-brother bond despite their exact opposite personas. He feels that K' isn't safe with him, and K' knows that. Underneath that tough exterior, K' is a bit of a coward. He was almost fried to bits escaping the cartel's lab along with his cyborg friend. But, he does have a bit of a vendetta against the cartel for making him who he is now. Even K' himself is hesitant on going with Maxima or not.

After what felt like forever, the silence is shattered as K' makes up his mind.

"Can't you just call already?"

"So that settles it." Maxima calls up their friend.

After Maxima was done informing Harry of the news, they hop back on their bikes, preparing to head to their destination.

"We do make a good team, I'll admit."

"Yeah, and a good friend like you is gonna buy me a bag of jerky on the way there."

"Really?"

"You hacked into back accounts in order to get some money for us to stay in the apartment, so don't even try to fastball buying a bag!"

Maxima laughs at K' response.

"Okay, you got me."

It's true, though. K' doesn't nab any bucks, so he lets Maxima do the dirty work in terms of finance.

As they turn on their engines, they peel out from the side of the road and onto the dusty blacktop.

* * *

 _ **Apologize for the short chapter, but this is pretty much how it looked originally, aside from the chatter I added between the K' and Maxima in the beginning and end in order to lengthen this up some more. There was a fourth chapter, but it was barely finished, so I didn't bother posting it. However, I do remember what I had planned for it, and if I ever get around to writing and a new-and-improved version of a NESTS story, I might be able to squeeze it in somewhere. Yes, I know this isn't the best story ever, just wanted to post it up because I thought it wasn't half-bad.**_


End file.
